Urne-Buriall

I just finished reading Sir Thomas Browne's Urne-Burrial, after seeing it referenced at the end of Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. It's one of those miscellaneous references that are so common in Borges' writing, that make me jealous of his erudition. The version I read is hosted on the University of Chicago's website, and this feels appropriate. I've found a lot of cool, random stuff on the simply styled webpages of professors. Urne-Burrial is interesting mostly for the style of its prose; as the Wikipedia article mentions, it's been "admired" by a lot of big names. Here are a few sentences that I particularly liked:

Some being of the opinion of Thales, that water was the originall of all things, thought it most equall to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment.

The Indian Brachmans seemed too great friends unto fire, who burnt themselves alive, and thought it the noblest way to end their dayes in fire; according to the expression of the Indian, burning himself at Athens, in his last words upon the pyre unto the amazed spectators, Thus I make my selfe Immortall.

Without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living Unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections, conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lye Urne by Urne, and touch but in their names.

Here's a poem that previous bit inspired.

Urne by Urne

If I shall not possess you as I live
Then perhaps in death I will be closer
Even as the air and space between us provoke
The sense of distance, and the appearance thereof
Perhaps the earth shall take us both among it
And there we shall, particle by particle
Become a part of one another, and of the same
If I cannot be with you now, among the living
Perhaps among the dead we shall lie, side by side
Like new lovers, each together and apart
Proximate but distinct, distinction fading
As the love matures


I like these last two lines, "Proximate but distinct, distinction fading/ As the love matures." As does everything these days, it reminds me of the poetry of Vasko Popa, and of the cycle Bone to Bone which is a series of conversations between two skeletons, and also of Verlaine's Colloque Sentimental. Sometimes, when I write a thing and see so much of other people in it, it feels like I didn't write it at all, as though it exists separate from me. Here are some more sentences from Urne-Burrial:

Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; What was unreasonably committed to the ground is reasonably resumed from it: Let Monuments and rich Fabricks, not Riches adorn mens ashes.

This above given as the hypothetical justification of a grave robber.

The dead seem all alive in the humane Hades of Homer, yet cannot well speak, prophesie, or know the living, except they drink bloud, wherein is the life of man. And therefore the souls of Penelope's Paramours conducted by Mercury chirped like bats and those which followed Hercules made a noise but like a flock of birds.

Were the happinesse of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdome to live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be more then death to dye, which makes us amazed at those audacities, that durst be nothing, and return into their Chaos again.

Now since these dead bones have already out-lasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, out-worn all the strong and specious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests; What Prince can promise such diuturnity unto his Reliques...

We live with death, and die not in a moment.

Grave-stones tell truth scarce fourty years: Generations passe while some trees stand, and old Families last not three Oaks. 

An amazing way of measuring time, by the lives of oaks.

But the iniquity of oblivion blindely scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it...

 Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves.

There is nothing strictly immortall, but immortality; whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the pecul    iar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy it self; And the highest strain of omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from the power of it self.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. 

On top of being beautifully written, there was a ton of new vocab for me. Here are some words:

• absumption: gradual destruction or disintegration; wasting away
• rampier: rampart
• obsequies: funerary rites
• testaceous: of a dull brick-red color
• incrassate: thickened in form or consistency
• exenteration: complete surgical removal of a body organ, especially the eyeball and other contents of the eye socket, usually in cases of malignant cancer
• calx: a powdery metallic oxide formed when an ore or mineral has been heated
• ferity: a wild, uncultivated state; savagery; ferocity
• apposition: the positioning of things or the condition of being side by side or close together; a relationship between two or more words or phrases in which the two units are grammatically parallel and have the same referent 
• diuturnity: long duration; lastingness
• decretory: Pertaining to an authoritative decree or final judgement